Living on the Edge

        A lot of things have happened since the last update. For one, we have chosen our setting/context/art style. Our players are ghosts inhabiting an old, dilapidated mansion with a long and colorful history. Each ghost met their end within its walls and believes itself the true owner, and every month on the full moon they simultaneously grow powerful enough to manifest and fight each other and try to banish the others to their eternal rest. With this came a new iteration of our dodge mechanic, now called "phasing" or "drifting". The dodge lasts for about half a second and makes the player intangible, allowing them to pass through attacks without harm as well as other players and the walls of the environment. We're building our attacks and our levels around this mechanic with a goal of creating a very dynamic space for players to show off their personal skill and tactical decisionmaking.
        Phasing creates a lot of subtle decisions for the player to make every second of gameplay and as a result it has a strong effect on the pacing of the combat. While your phase is available you can play much more aggressively because you always have a fallback in case things go wrong. You can dodge your opponent's biggest attack without letting up your own onslaught, or you can disengage through a wall and look for a more opportune time to strike. There's a lot of applications both for aggressive close range playstyles and longer range sniping or hit and run strategies. Baiting your opponent's phase is a valuable tactic as well, because it puts them in a state of vulnerability that you can capitalize on. Phasing through a wall can be both an escape maneuver as well as a bluff, because if an opponent follows you through then you know for sure that their phase is down as well and if you turn and fight then they will have much more limited options to defend themselves. We expect proper use of the phasing mechanic to be a main determination of skill level, and hope that it'll add that extra level we need to move above and beyond button mashing into a more competitive game. So far it's testing well in terms of first impressions and fun factor with new players, and we'll be keeping a close eye on how it evolves as repeat testers become more comfortable with the system.

Week 7: A Few Good Ideas

        Our first foray into stage 3 has been centered on our art style and the theming of our game. It's going to be crucial to contextualize a lot of our complicated mechanics (the drafting system, especially) in order to make the game feel very cohesive to the player. With a strong enough theme it would also offer us a lot of affordances to make the different attacks more readable, which will be an increasing concern as we implement more later in the project. We're all in agreement that this is very important stuff, but we haven't found a style that the whole team is behind just yet.
        In terms of design, what I want most out of our art style is something the players can really latch on to, something that can engage the players immediately and hold their attention long enough for them to get a good sample of the gameplay. I feel pretty confident about how well our game will play, but I realize that it will take a few matches before players can really get the full idea. The biggest contributors to a player's first experience will be the most immediately gratifying parts, like big impressive set-pieces in the levels, flashy attacks, and a good thematic grounding for why the player is here, why they are fighting each other, and how they are doing it. I think our focus will be finding some themes and ideas that excite the kind of people in our target demographic and bringing out something cool and new.

Updates and some concrete examples to come.

Week 5-6: Concatenation

        The last few weeks have been eaten up by Stage 2, which we will be challenging tomorrow. The stage requirements are mostly paperwork, documentation, and bookkeeping, so there haven't been any exciting design upsets to speak of. Hopefully as we swerve into Stage 3 there'll be some real meaty design issues for me to talk about. Our top priority at the moment is implementing and testing our variety of "spice" mechanics for our core gameplay. We've had test sessions twice a week and so far we've learned that well, people like our game. It's based on very tried and true mechanics and our prototype has a couple pretty exciting gameplay patterns thanks to the different sets of attacks you can draft. The short range teleport, our "blink", is one of the more popular moves, as well as the scattershot, which launches large numbers of randomly moving projectiles that quickly clutter the screen. We have a lot to iron out but the initial results are promising.

         What I mean by "spice" mechanic is something to set our game apart from competitors and give it its own identity. If we executed all these core platforming and shooting mechanics flawlessly we'd have a pretty solid game, but rather unremarkable. If we want to stand out (which we do) then we have to bring something new to the table. We've been trying to make sure that the art direction we choose works well with our mechanics, and in a lot of ways the ideas we've been pitching on both sides have influenced the process of the other. We have several systems planned that we'll be putting in front of testers in the coming weeks, and we'll be trying to match these up with art tests and focus groups to try and keep a sense of cohesion in what we're making. Stage 3 is going to be the biggest part of the project with the highest amount of turnover and iteration, and I think it's going to be pretty exciting to see what makes it through the grinder.More to come in weeks yet to pass.